Just started Stella Deus ~ Gates of Eternity, for the first time ever. Played through the first two or three battle scenes, and...so far, it seems like typical strategy RPG fair. Line your characters up with the enemy, select an attack, click "OK," and watch them die.

The story's a little interesting. Taking a simple philosophy such as apathy towards the destruction of the world, and making it punishable by death? Damn, that's capital punishment for being emo! Those, of course, are the villains. The cute little emos are the good guys!

...anyway, is there anything I should be aware of, to make this game more than a typical strategy RPG? Any tips on building characters, learning special attacks, using special attacks, etc.?

I'm 22 hours into the game and honestly, I don't think there's anything special you can do in terms of building up your characters except level grinding in the Catacomb of Trials. In terms of advice, combination attacks are your friend.

I don't mean to discourage you, but I'm finding the story horribly boring and trite. Voice acting, dialogue, character development, it's all blah. Thankfully I'm a tactical-RPG nut, so I can forgive some of the game's flaws.

The character designs are awesome, especially those for the enemy foot soldiers; they're faceless and look like they're made out of armor! Axe men have spherical armor which covers both their head and entire torso. Damn, it looks so strange and usual, it's just awesome.

Unfortunately, you can't recruit your own soldiers in the game; there are plenty of enough story characters to go around, anyway, and they're all good. Except for Tia. Why must every damn RPG and anime in recent mention have some kind of cat girl? Furthermore, why do they always have to say things like "Nya" and "Meow?" So, you're a cat. I get it already! And their dialogue is always some of the most immature bullshit you could possibly be forced to listen to. This isn't the kind of game to be putting comic relief in, nor furry molestation fantasies. (Yeah, I know some of you sickos out their dream about molesting furries).

Only thing that's strange is that your story characters have some of THE most futuristic-looking armor, and yet, the people of the world live in stone and clay cottages. It's like, how could you have the technology to produce such advanced-looking armor, and yet, people are still living in what looks like third-world standards? I going to guess it's just one of those ambiguous, hybrid things that goes on with a lot of these fantasy/sci-fi kind of things.

Other than Tia, the characters and story are pretty much driving the game for me. Well, Viper and Jade are also pretty stupid villains, too. Their voices are absolutely annoying to listen to, and Jade's character is probably the only one who looks stupid, other than Tia.

Did I mention how much I otherwise like the characters, and the way they look? They're just awesome.

Never played it and just going on what I heard, but I heard the translation got botched and the original Japanese one was better, but I'm not entirely sure of this. Most people who say that... it's debatable that they have a really solid grasp on the Japanese language, and even then, good enough to tell good writing from bad writing. And I don't mean this as a slight or anything. Something totally mundane in one language CAN sound awesome and poetic if you semi-translate it, just because of how the language works.

That being said, I also heard it was a mostly standard strategy RPG, gameplay wise. And erm, I'm not fond of those, especially when they rely so much on overlevelling.

Just curious, but do you have a decent PC? Jagged Alliance 2 and the X-Com series are great, and while they're technically not strategy RPGs, JA2 at least is... very story driven, and they ALL have levelling up/skilling up/equipping/whatever, so they're close enough. JA2 just got reprinted recently, at least, and shouldn't be TOO hard to get.

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o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

I don't recall needing any special tactics. There were a few battles that were fairly annoying later on, but as long as you exploit the fairly weak AI so you can heal and whatnot, it's not that tough. I've heard the fusion system gives you some insanely good gear, but I never bothered with it and pretty much dominated everything anyway.

The plot was something of a disappointment though. Early on it was decent enough, but then it took a turn for the worse in chapter 4. So much so that in the last chapter I still haven't finished it even though I'm probably only like a battle or two away from the end.

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It's never too late to start learning; it's always too early to stop learning.

The story's a little interesting. Taking a simple philosophy such as apathy towards the destruction of the world, and making it punishable by death? Damn, that's capital punishment for being emo! Those, of course, are the villains. The cute little emos are the good guys!

Yeah, I wouldn't call it an emo religion. Emo kids would cry about the end of the world. These people are ascetics and stoics...they wait for the end because they understand that's the way it's meant to be. Fatalist, yes. Emo? nah.

2) The coolest thing about the game is the ability to essentially get *everyone* on your team, even all the villains. The thing is, it's crazy hard to achieve, you have to do *everything* perfectly throughout the game with dialogues and cutscenes and stuff. There are walkthroughs for it.

There are "ultimate weapons" for each major character, and again, this includes the villains if you can get them on your team. It's totally excellent if you do this. :)